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Vanessa Van Helsing
Vanessa Van Helsing is the show's titular protagonist and main character. She is humanity's last hope to lead an offensive to take back what has been lost in a post-Rising world, as her unique blood composition gives her the ability to turn vampires human. As she searches for her daughter Dylan, she must fend off the vampires who see her as a threat to their very existence. "You'd think spending years in a coma and waking up to learn vampires have taken over the world would be enough to take someone down. Not Vanessa Van Helsing ... it just toughened her up. Determined to find her daughter in a post-apocalyptic world, Vanessa soon realizes she may be humanity's savior, as her blood can turn a vampire back into human. This, of course, also makes her a target for every vampire out there. No worries, though ... she can take them." Biography Before The Rising, Vanessa lived in an apartment with her ten year old daughter, Dylan. She was often unemployed and struggled to make money, often resorting to selling her blood just to earn some cash. But when she did work, it was as a bus driver, which made her fairly familiar with the underground route system, this knowledge would later prove to be of use as she uses it to to reach the Hospital without being captured by the vampires. She had a strained relationship with Gary, her ex-husband and Dylan's dad, due to his lack of parenting skills and presence in Dylan's life. Growing up, Vanessa knew that she was adopted, however, she was unaware of the family in which she was birthed to. It would later be revealed by Dmitri that she comes from the Van Helsing bloodline. Season One In the year 2016, Vanessa is selling her blood for money in order to give her daughter, Dylan, a proper birthday. With the cash, she tells Dylan that they would have cake when they got home and promises to take her shopping the next day. At her apartment building, she gets into an altercation with her friend Susan's abusive boyfriend, Tommy, breaking his nose when he wouldn't leave. The encounter upsets Dylan, which Vanessa regrets. She presents her daughter with a terribly prepared birthday cake, eventually succeeding in lifting her spirits. However, her ex-husband and Dylan's father, Gary, undoes her efforts, causing Dylan to hide somewhere in the apartment. As Vanessa looks for her, she is attacked by a vampire named Balthazar, who was sent there by Rebecca to kill her. This leads to a huge fight throughout the apartment and results in Balthazar's reversion and Vanessa's slow death. She tells Dylan to alert Susan and call the police and her father; her final words to her daughter was "I love you". Later, her body was examined by Doc, who finds anomalies with her supposed corpse. Doc sends her findings to her sister, who quickly sends Marines to retrieve Vanessa's body. However, a recently erupted super volcano's ash cloud allows all vampires to come out of hiding, and Vanessa and her guards are prevented from leaving the hospital. Continue Reading Here.... Three years later, Vanessa is still lying unconscious on an exam table, though this changes after three vampires break into the lab to kill her. One vampire begins to feed on her, but stops midway and begins to vomit blood on her, growing weak. Somehow, this triggers her awakening, and the remaining vampires begin to attack. Vanessa fights back and eventually kills the vampires. Upon discovering that Dylan is nowhere near, she becomes hellbent on finding her daughter, no matter the cost. Ted, a former Marine who used to watch over her, secretly offers to help her leave the facility, going so far as to deceive his friend and teammate Axel. However, this is soon revealed to be a ploy; Ted intends to deliver her to the vampires, believing this would save him and humanity from further torture. When she refuses to go, she and Ted begin to fight. Ted manages to stab Vanessa's hand with a knife, but she then uses it to stab him in the eye. Upon taking the knife out of her hand, her flesh and bones rapidly begin to heal. Continue Reading Here.... Vanessa and her companions discover that one of the vampires, Flesh, somehow survived and was returned to his human state. John identifies him as the one who bit Vanessa, blaming her for what happened to Flesh, who confirms that he "could feel again" as soon as he tasted her blood. Vanessa adamantly claims she is "nothing special," but is eventually convinced later on. When vampires try to trade her for John's wife, Wendy, John immediately holds her hostage as a bargaining chip. However, Axel shoots Wendy, to save her from further abuse and torture as well as keep Vanessa out of the vampire's hands. This results in an altercation between him and John, during which they destroyed the makeshift turbine that kept their electricity running. With their primary power source gone, Axel gears up to find spare parts to fix the basement generator, and Vanessa insists on accompanying him. While Axel is scavenging for parts underwater, a few ferals appear, causing Vanessa to tug at his rope to call him back. As they fend off the attack, Vanessa is bitten as she attempts to defend herself from the ferals attacking, which results in the feral's death; this is a first as every other vampire that had bitten her was cured. When they return, they find vampires surrounding the hospital's entrance, but they are chased off when Flesh shows them that he was human once more and warns them that "the dead woman" would turn them too. The path cleared, Vanessa retrieves Wendy's body and brings her inside too. Later, she confronts Flesh over his actions, insisting that she doesn't want to be involved with the vampires. After Flesh explains himself, he asks if she could turn his wife back if she was a vampire; Vanessa doesn't answer. When Axel asks her to try reverting Doc, she agrees to try. When Doc refuses, Vanessa takes a chunk out of her, resulting in Doc's reversion Continue Reading Here.... After finding Cynthia dead, Vanessa tells Axel that they should leave the hospital, reasoning that it would prevent the group from turning on each other. When Axel refuses, she constructs a plan to sneak out, which involved setting a small fire as a distraction, giving her enough time to make her escape. However, she gets stuck at the front door as she doesn't know the code; luckily Mohamad does, and he insists on accompanying her outside, hoping to find his sister Sheema. Their first stop is Vanessa's former residence; Vanessa is initially convinced that Dylan hadn't survived the attack that killed her, but hope is restored when she sees small bloody footprints leading to the door. She later helps a group of survivors, choosing to hold off the incoming vampires so Mohamad can lead the group, which includes a little girl named Callie, to the hospital. Though she intended to make it back, she gets captured instead, and is taken to Julius' compound. Continue Reading Here.... After being captured and taken to Julius, she discovers that her friend, Susan, had been turned into a vampire. Vanessa is goaded into fighting when Susan claims to have killed her daughter, and eventually beats and reverts her friend. She makes a show of her triumph, then makes her escape with a newly cured Susan. Along the way, she learns that Susan hadn't killed Dylan; after Vanessa died, Dylan was last seen with the police and her father was supposed to pick her up. Some moments later, a shadowy figure begins to approach them, and Vanessa tells Susan to run. Continue Reading Here.... Vanessa picks up a pipe as they continue to move through the tunnels. Before long they are attacked by a mutated vampire. Vanessa's leg is bitten as she attempts to protect herself and Susan from this, eventually gaining the upper hand and stabbing it through the eye. She passes out quickly after killing the creature. As she and Susan proceed on their route, Vanessa notices that her wound isn't healing; in fact it's getting worse and she has no idea why. Vanessa makes Susan promise that if Susan finds Dylan first, she would tell Dylan that Vanessa is alive and coming for her. They soon make it back to the hospital, narrowly avoiding the ferals that come after them. They are greeted by the group she had saved, surprising them with her survival. As Doc examines her, she learns that the group, led by Brendan, have taken over the hospital, banished Mohamad and imprisoned her initial companions, whom they were already planning to execute; Vanessa is outraged and confronts Brendan, who claims that the situation is temporary and done only because one of them murdered Brendan's friend Roger. Vanessa pretends to acquiesce and stay out of it, but constructs a plan to free the others and take back the hospital. Some time later, Callie comes to visit her, and Vanessa invites her to play a game of hide and seek to keep the child out of harm's way. Later, when Callie discovers that her group was being sent away, she elects to chase after them; due to her injury, Vanessa is unable to chase after her. When Doc tries to comfort her, she shuts the conversation down. Continue Reading Here.... In the exam room, Vanessa lays unconscious as Doc attempts to find out why she's not healing. Vanessa wakes up feeling pain everywhere, especially her leg as it burns from the bite she suffered earlier from a mutated vampire. Doc has to give her medicine to manage the pain. Some time later, she learns that Julius has brought an army to recapture her and agonizes over her inability to help. Axel insists they can handle it and that if they reach her, he would "take her out" himself. After Susan leaves her side to see what was going on, Doc comments on how interesting she was. Vanessa agrees, but passes out mid-speech. Discovering that Vanessa was dying, Doc gives her adrenaline and CPR to restart her heart, then tries to cut into Vanessa's leg to see if there was anything there. When Vanessa's leg keeps healing, she enlists John's help keeping the incision open and eventually finds a vampire tooth lodged under Vanessa's skin. Doc soon injects Vanessa with a drug to wake her up; Vanessa claims she feels much better. During a quick meeting, she suggests that they "disperse her blood like a chemical weapon" against the vampires, but Doc tells them it would take a while and possibly all of her blood to do; hearing this, Axel nixes the idea. When the vampires come, Vanessa recognizes the first man as the vampire who attacked and killed her. Realizing she must have turned him human, Axel calls for a retreat and leads them down a hidden stairwell. Their progress is interrupted when John pulls a gun on Flesh, insisting that he was still one of the vampires. Fed up, Vanessa tells John to pull the trigger if he was so convinced of Flesh's allegiances. When he doesn't, Vanessa confiscates his gun and orders them to hurry. Upon reaching the garage, Vanessa sees a converted ambulance and realizes what Axel meant earlier about "taking her out." The group drives away in the ambulance as the hospital explodes above them. Continue Reading Here.... The survivors overhear bell tolls while stopping to stock up on gas. They start to argue over their next move, and when asked for her opinion, Vanessa believes they need to make a decision, offering that they put it to a vote. Doc reveals that her sister Grace works for the base, and that Grace may be the one who sent the Marines to retrieve Vanessa's body. After reaching the base, Vanessa and Doc check out Grace's office, where Vanessa finds an empty folder among the information Doc sent to Grace, labelled File 281 - The Farm. Their search is interrupted when a land mine explodes, and upon returning to their bunk, they find the others interrogating a newcomer, Gorman Jones. Despite the others pointing out they didn't have enough supplies to go around, Vanessa insists they shouldn't abandon Gorman. As other land mines are triggered by incoming vampires, the group debates what to do. When Axel insists they couldn't stay there, Vanessa jokingly asks if he had a bomb shelter hidden away; as it turns out, he does: an underground research facility called The Farm. Hearing this, Vanessa insists they go in. Later, Vanessa interrupts John as he was trying to rape Susan, knocking him out. They restrain John, after which Doc notices that the bruises on Susan's neck match the ones she found on Cynthia's corpse, leading the group to suspect John as Cynthia and Roger's murderer. After finding a knife and Cynthia's finger in John's things, they become convinced he was the killer. Desperate to save himself, John escapes his restraints and puts a broken glass bottle to Susan's neck. Vanessa pulls a knife from her boot, throwing it with great force into John's neck, killing him. As she retrieves the knife, Vanessa tells the group she hopes they were right about John. Continue Reading Here.... As Vanessa lays in her bed, Axel enters to inform her of the dead body run that he's going on, seeing that she's in bed with Susan, he decides to do it on his own. Shortly after, Vanessa joins him anyways as he's piling the bodies up. She explains that she and Susan are only friends, he makes a smart remark about them being "special friends", she laughs, then thanking him for having her back and being someone she can trust, she doesn't have a lot of people in her life like that, especially not men, but he claims trust is stupid in this time because of the apocalypse and all. She follows him, demanding that he elaborates, Axel reveals that he read Vanessa's file at the base, it mostly documented her childhood, her mother giving her up, Vanessa corrects him, saying that her mother died in childbirth, and that she lived with a foster family, but her mother never gave her up. She demands to see the file but Axel claims to have left it, that day, after escaping the bunker, she discovers that Axel lied, she finds the file, which reveals some startling information. Continue Reading Here.... The survivors arrive at a new community called Eden, they are approached by Micah, the community's leader, he demands to know why they were in the woods, Vanessa explains they were moving south, but kept running into one bad situation after another. She is in disbelief after learning that Eden has an arrangement with the vampires, they receives blood in order for the vampire to leave them along, however, she fins this to be too good to be true. Vanessa quickly forms a bond with Theo, a resident of Eden, she eventually learns that her suspicions were correct, everything is too good to be true after learning that Micah was feeding the vampires mothers and there new born babies. She and Theo interrupt the latest transaction, scaring Magdalene off, then confronting Micah. Continue Reading Here.... After taking refuge in Susan's childhood home, Vanessa reveals that she'll be moving on to Denver soon in order to find Dylan. And after learning from Gordon Orwell that there's a higher altitude in Denver, meaning there's a good chance the skies are clearer, so the vampires can't come out in the day, is only another reason for her to go. However, before she can move forward with her plans, Susan is killed in the woods by Sam, after mourning her friend's death, Vanessa takes Sam out into the woods to kill him. She doesn't go through with it, instead cutting the back of his leg, crippling him, leaving Sam to the vampires. Continue Reading Here.... She and Mohamad break into the vampire camp hoping to find Dylan and Sheema. After making it past the guards, Vanessa heads towards the building were the children are kept. She makes her way to the slaughterhouse, when the butcher returns, Vanessa attacks with her Katana but he's far too powerful, he places Vanessa on the table, but she manages to fight back, eventually killing the vampire. Vanessa continues to move throughout the building, she reaches the sleeping quarters, she explains that she's looking for her daughter, showing an elderly woman a picture but she doesn't recognize Dylan, she was 10 in the picture but she's currently 13. The elderly woman explains that they don't bring children there, only the old and the sick, only the ones they want to bring out, it's a blood farm not a work camp. Continue Reading Here.... Vanessa has been captured by Dmitri, from him, she learns the truth about her biological mother, and the rest of her family. Her name is not Vanessa Seward, as she was raised to believe, but Vanessa Van Helsing, she comes from a royal bloodline of vampire hunters. She is special, the vampires will use her blood to make life for themselves even better, she is not humanity's savior as she's been told, she's vampires' rise to domination, at least according to Dmitri. They offer her blood, hoping to find out if it has any effects on her abilities, she initially refuses to drink but as the hunger becomes too much, she is left with no other option. Vanessa drinks the blood given to her, which result in an enhancement of her strength, she unintentionally bends the rail on her bed with very little difficulty. Continue Reading Here.... Personality Vanessa is tough, brave, and often fearless, especially when it comes to protecting those that she cares about. She is also kind and compassionate enough to help total strangers as well, saving a group of survivors from a couple of ferals and sending them to the hospital for protection and medical care. She shows no fear when facing vampires, and tends to go into an animalistic rage when physically struck. Abilities Vanessa possesses several abilities that Rebecca identifies as vampire traits: Rapid cellular regeneration: It allows her to heal from any injury near instantaneously. The first time this healing factor kicked in was when Flesh fed upon her neck; however, she healed from this attack moments later. Another example occurred when she was attacked with a knife by Ted, who cuts her several times and stabs clean through the hand. The wound healed fairly quickly after removing the blade. Reversion (Vampire-to-Human): Vanessa's bite and blood are capable of reverting vampires back into humans. One of the first displays of this ability transpired After Vanessa bit Doc, she was reverted to human after falling unconscious for an unknown amount of time. Meanwhile, consuming her blood caused vampires such as Bob, Balthazar, Flesh and Susan to convulse and puke, eventually resulting in reversion. Susan's reversion seemed to happen within minutes while Flesh's seemed to take longer, as he was dragged through the hospital and thrown down the garbage. It is unknown how long it took Bob and Balthazar to revert, however, the process seems to vary with each individual. Once a vampire has been turned human by Vanessa, they are incapable of ever becoming a vampire again. This was proven to be true when Doc remained human despite being bitten by Magdalene. Feral Poisoning: Vanessa's blood isn't only a cure, it works as a poison as well. Unlike normal vampires, ferals have a negative reaction to not only her blood but her bite, it kills them almost instantly. The first case of feral poisoning presented itself when she and Axel were attacked in the shipyard while looking for spare parts to fix the basement generator. The feral took a bite out of her which resulted in it's death moments later. Animalistic Ferocity: When under attack, Vanessa has been known to go into animal like state. When she is attacked, backed into a corner or feels threatened in any way, the rage over comes her to the point that she loses control. Judging by her daughter's reaction pre-Rising, Vanessa seemed to get into a lot of fights, indicating that the threat isn't limited to vampires. Vanessa is also fairly trained in combat, even before The Rising; whether this naturally came to her or was acquired over time is still unclear. After learning that her friend and neighbor Susan was being abused by her boyfriend, Vanessa intervened. She not only countered Tommy's attack, but slammed his face against the wall, breaking his nose. She can defeat and kill vampires with relative ease, leading some vampires to fear her. Arsenal *Fireman's axe *12-gauge shotgun *Tactical Knife *Katana Trivia *In It Begins, Dmitri reveals that Vanessa is a member of the Van Helsing lineage and states that her bloodline is 'a kind of royalty.' **It was also hinted that Vanessa's father may have been a vampire; Dmitri said that her mother tried to stop the birth when she found out what Vanessa's father was, out of fear. When she couldn't, she hid the baby from the vampires instead. **Furthermore, drinking human blood appeared to enhance Vanessa's abilities, specifically her physical strength. Appearances Gallery Help_Me_1x01_Vanessa_unconscious.png Help_Me_1x01_Vanessa_showering.png Help_Me_1x01_Vanessa_holding_assault_rifle.png Help_Me_1x01_Vanessa_with_a_knife_stabbed_through_her_hand.png Category:Characters Category:Season One Characters Category:Female characters Category:Main Characters Category:Humans Category:Van Helsings Category:Hybrids